I had found a place to live until my stay at MIT ends. But the person who insisted I should sublet her place had not notified her roommate and so my accommodation plan got crushed. I hurriedly found an Airbnb place for a month and I have never seen a more unwelcoming host in my life. Thus I started to look for a place, finally found one, but the landlord insisted on credit history. Since I do not live in the US, I don’t have one and he kept asking questions to verify my situation and in the end, I canceled my request. Fortunately, MIT housing seems to have found a place for me that I can start staying next Friday. Hopefully, I will be offered a formal offer tomorrow and I will resume my peaceful sabbatical life. But the first 11 days in Boston have passed quiet miserable. Today I have found another Airbnb place and my current one is valid until the end of February- see how unwelcoming it is. Hopefully, this will be a better one until my MIT Housing starts. It has been a costly affair all along. Let’s keep fingers crossed. [Let me also add that when I arrived at Boston Logan Airport, my luggage was broken, it was extremely cold and the Airbnb place was relatively distant from the campus]

In the meantime, my MIT check-in went relatively smoothly. I was given office space, ID etc immediately. There was a mistake about the J1 scholar exchange document. It seems to be fixed but I have to call the Homeland Department for an irregularity- I assume because of the document stuff. Honestly, I am a little bit scared to call them, so I will go to the international office tomorrow and I will ask help in calling them. The classes start tomorrow and I will be able to meet with Prof. Fischer by the end of this month. So I still have some free time it seems.

During these days, I even thought of just getting a ticket and fly back to Istanbul immediately. I feel better now and my excitement about meeting with crazy intelligent people at MIT is coming back. I hope from now on I will tell you happier stories.